


The TimeKeeper

by BruceWayne003



Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Affectionate Insults, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art School, Insults, M/M, Masturbation in Bathroom, Minor Character Death, Multiple Universes Colliding, Slight Kanekicest, Suicidal Thoughts, Teen Romance, Time Loop, Time Travel, Yaoi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:27:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4530711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BruceWayne003/pseuds/BruceWayne003
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nightmares, Visions, Dreamt pain which is actually felt; all of it hidden by a lovely, innocent smile crafted in Kaneki Ken's lips. But his blurry present shows a blurry but exact future, he suddenly discovers. His ability to see the smoke of the following actions of everyone around him drives him to insanity, as he finds out he can't proove himself wrong and escape that reality that  might  sound exciting but it's a disadvantage for him. Will everything change when this dark-purple haired youth shows out on every train ride Kaneki takes to school, to demostrate him that he's not the only one living that dangerous reality?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 0.1

**Author's Note:**

> ▓ A/N ▓  
> Hello there. I really appreciate those who check this Ayakane fic because, sincerelly, I thought I was the only one who cracked that ship when this fanart of Touka trying to kiss Kaneki appeared on my dash in Tumblr. And well, you know, Ayato interferes and Kaneki kisses Ayato instead.  
> My eyes flashed and my screen shot gay feels and rainbows to me. Now I can't get out. Why must I always ship two guys that sincerelly could send each other to hell? I'm trash.  
> But well, even though both of them receive a lot of hate I'm going to keep going because I sincerely do not give a shit about the ayakane hate. It's a real lame.  
> There are more notes at the end of the chapter. Meanwhile, enjoy my first fanfiction in Ao3, I hope it's worthy :)

Being in the position I am now, it's kind of uncomfortable.

Speaking in a way in which you find yourself trapped in a compartment, and you don't know what force between heaven and hell brought you there. There's not a single remain of light that can guide you to find out what is the dense and noisome liquid you're wallowing on in search for warmth, and your left foot is partially stuck to the floor, causing you not to be able to move.

Speaking in a way in which you think that the only solution to end the suffering is to give up, lay down and rot as a dead rat's flesh. Or keep living. Perhaps living is the thing that bothers me the most, because living is just another word for self-harassing and masochism.

But that's not an obstacle, is it? Living, I mean. By licking the thick substance from the floor as an only resource of water, which I believe is poisonous somehow, my body has slowly showed results of the negative impact it has over my organs. I've been counting the days I've been coughing blood and having sudden headaches just in case I make it out and have a detailed story to tell. I don't really care if I leave or not. All I want is to die, to end everything after a single last breath. It's the fastest way to leave every single preocupation behind you and relax, to find out how every single thing you once saw with your two own eyes vanished with the wind. It is living that alows me not to die, that keeps my body breathing some dirty, sickish air and pumping some blood. It is living which is my first obstacle, perhaps because it isn't easy. Committing suicide with not much tools to accelerate the process is hard. I'm sure that, besides the pond I tend to lick, there's nothing else around me that could help my body and mental health give up on me. And it's painful to die slowly, when you can do nothing about it. You can't go faster, and your decay process has already become part of the definition of "Slow as fuck". The thing stuck to my leg - I can't even see what it is due to the lack of light - seems to be the only useful tool on my reach due to its sharpness. I could cut myself until all my blood runs free and no life remains on my stupid body.

How do I know it's sharp even though I can't even see shit? The first times I attempted to desperately escape this horrid reality, every time I attempted sliding my left foot to free it from whatever was attached to it, that thing was sharp enough to rip my Achilles tendon and the skin around it, slashing the flesh and pulling it away within the smallest movement. But why doesn't it help for my current situation? I guess because I'm already a corpse, and my organs cooperate with that title I've gained - even though I auto claim me as one -. I guess because my brain cells have died, and with them, the nerves that allow me to move my arm to the sides. Why hadn't I thought of grabbing that useless piece of shit when I had time? Everything would be easier if my mind wasn't that innocent at the time, if I hadn't been so childish and thought of the quickest solution just right in the moment when I noticed the excruciating pain running up from the tendon to my calf. I was not thinking in death at those moments. That's my only thesis. I was thinking on survival, on returning to my normal life and spend my remaining years happily as I always had tried to. That was a goal to achieve, a mission to fulfill. To live. But I'm alive, which means I partly achieved what I desperately was looking for, but not in the way I wanted. And it hurts. The pain is the message, the message which tells me that nothing will ever work out for me. I won't make it. I won't. I will, perhaps. But If I'm living right now, that's 100% against my will, and has been happening without my permision. Even thought this cellar has trained me to be hard as a stone, and not feel emotions at all.

Nevermind. I won't. I'll die before I turn insane and start eating myself.

The other thing that I can't even think about, it's time. By exploring my skinny chest which easily exposes my bones, I can tell for sure that I've been here nonsense for almost 1 month already, even though I lost track of time. I haven't eaten in ages, but if I'm still alive, it means a month hasn't passed by. My step father told me once that you can survive a month without food, but you can't survive a week without water. I've been drinking whatever is spread on the floor, I haven't eaten anything. But I'm alive, unfortunately. That means a month hasn't passed by, but anyway I'm surprised to see my body has resisted this long under the circumstances I have lived in.

That has become my method to keep track of time, which has been leaving its mark on me. I can't even move my eyes or my fingers; I'm way too weak for it. The only movements I'm still able to do, are lick, and move my head whenever my drinking spot dries, in search for another one to keep drinking from.

If I could just accelerate time, and see my future... See whether my body dries, when it's color is drained away and I slowly sink with the stones of the floor, or whether someone comes to my rescue.

I know for sure that no one has a shit of an idea of where I am, but there are 7.3 billion people in this world, and at least one of them must be looking for me. I'm falling into a deep pit of blind faith, but it seems my only resource at the moment. I know someone is out there, wondering where am I after so many days. What have I been doing? How am I?

But I also know for sure that rescuing someone lasts a lifetime. Especially when the victim does not call for help, maybe because she/he doesn't want to. Maybe because that person doesn't want his/her steps to be remembered, and get lost with the memories everyone held about him/her- Or maybe that person's just like me, that can't do fucking anything of fucking anything to ask for help. But the rescues eventually happen, and I can only entertain myself while the day successfully arrives.

Sometimes when I'm bored, I think about stuff. It's the most continuous hobby I've been practicing, or either the only one I can do. And it's fun. My memories have been dying as well, I guess, so I lack the ability to remember stuff, but that type of amnesia allows you to doubt about everything: your identity, your family, your friends, if you ever had a job, If you ever had a fiancé or something close enough to a serious relationship. If you ever had a life. You ask yourself those questions daily trying to catch any flashback in your reach. And so, the answers to my questions (which are the same every day) vary. I like questioning my existence, because it makes me regret it more and accelerate my death process in a bit. But make it faster. I'm just trying to convince this old body of mine to finally obey and die.

What do I look like right now? - Well maybe I look like a rotten corpse, or a dried fruit. Maybe that's what I am, judging by my skinny body which sometimes, when the destiny allows me to, I explore to see if any segment has passed by. It's my brain for sure, which whenever it wants to, tells me like "Oh, you should go check your body and see if you're still alive." But I've completely forgot what my appearance is, or what my face looks like.

Where am I? - It's a dream, or better to say nightmare, that has become real. Way too real, perhaps. Enough to make you forget what the feeling of pain and hunger is like. You are... probably in some sort of jail. Even though I can remember that "days" ago I claimed it as a monster's dungeon or something.

Well it feels like a cell, anyway. Because stone floor tiles and no light can't mean a hospital, can they. And I get the feeling that nurses and doctors feed you well on hospitals, and don't allow you to lick the floor for the remaining days untill your full recovery shows results of happening. Until your body finally shows signs of improoving, of feeling better, of emmiting that radiant health you've always had. But inside here, it feels like you were sent to pay off a debt, and instead of being watched, of being forced to do any hard work in exchange, you were abandoned and forced to live on your own, you were tested to see how far could you get with anything to help you, or at least how much could your body resist until finally giving up. Maybe you are a test, or an experiment. Call it whatever you'd like to, but the thing is, you're being watched from nowhere near. Enough far to make you feel like you're the only person still breathing. Actually those experiments, I heard, were tested in today's world with criminals accursed to death. Maybe to find a way to live longer or something, if a disaster ever happens and no man-made supplies are close to help. But it's kinda difficult if you can't move.

The most important thing to notice from this casual situation is that as far as I know I haven't committed any crimes yet. I wasn't born to steal, or kill, or murder or kidnap. That isn't the "me" I know. The "me" I know would probably look for a job, start a family and die after a long life, leaving his kids in charge for the things he has left inside this world. But yet, this is a punishment no "clean" or "sinner" deserves, not even the cruelest of criminals, murderers or assassins can realize such a crime to be punished this way. In any common jail of the state, obligatorily, you must have a bed - even if it's a piece of brick -, a window for light, the right to exit the cell and eat, the right to move around. Even if you were placed to eat another man's shit or simply a bowl containing three grains of rice a day. That's food. And that's fair, in the sense in which every time you take a bite of either the man's shit or you swallow up the rice grain you know you're eating, you know that those who manipulate the system are trying to keep you alive. What kind of cell is this. Where am I. What crime am I paying for.

"It falls all around him, the snow.

It touches him, carefuly burning him,

as he hangs his head low because he has nowhere to run.

What he once had just left

The cold is all he has now

His little wings frozen tiny heartbeat growing ever fainter

Loosing a battle he fought so hard for

But in the end he was destined to fail

By the time I found him

He was so cold

He lay there alone

In the snow

just a little bird nobody ever knew about, nobody saved."

This is not a creation of a human being. This isn't human. This isn't how I know living in a jail would be. This is just a pit of agony, desperation and hunger. And because this thing's allowing me to live, it's an atrocity created by beasts hungry of tears and pain from their victims. Perhaps is because you were born. That was a huge mistake. That is the crime that has brought shadows into this world. That's the crime that brought you here, because justice doesn't mean claiming someone guilty for nothing. You, living, must be the worst sin someone has ever regarded, or else you must have done something much worse than that, which I don't believe at all. Your existence has been erased as well, I wonder to myself. That must be your punishment, sort of the ones you never forget once you get out of.

Is someone missing me right now? - No. And yesterday you said the same. And before yesterday. And the day before the before yesterday and so on. This world has already forgotten you, as well as you have too. You don't remember your name, or your face, or your past. You don't clearly know who this body, who has been licking floors from memorable ages ago, belongs to. And if someone did missed you, you would probably be home. You would be drinking warm coffee, wrapped around a quilt near the fire. Because someone went for you, right? Someone started a search in your name.

And found you.

But where are you now? Who the fuck knows! That doesn't even matter right now! Because nobody cares of you, nobody is looking for you. I feel drums rolling inside my head awaiting for an answer.

What are you?

A waste.

A waste of what?

Of time, space, oxygen, blood, organs and other stuff who could have been useful for someone else, but was wasted on you.

Congratulations for being a waste.

Now keep on the good work, and crouch down and rot you worthless piece of shit.


	2. 1

My eyes opened wide harshly, followed by a big and deep wheeze with the same intensity, such in a violent way like if I had been drowning in a pool the whole night and had finally seen the chance to get to the surface and breathe.  
And I don't know from where, but I managed to pull myself up like a spring and get a check of my own.  
The thing is that, I was completely sweaty and shivering cold, even though judging by the sun rays that penetrate my window frame, the day seems to be boiling outside. My slim, raven hair felt absolutely soaked, but not in the sense that it feels right, like for example when you just leave the shower or something. That feels absolutely good.  
Sweat driped from every lock and wettened the quilts I was firmly clinged to, like those girls in the movies that squeal in horror when a ghost suddenly shows up in their room.  
It didn't took me long to realize before I noticed it was all just a product of a nightmare. I tried to get a glimpse of what my mind was full of last night, and the mazes that my creativity had built for me to escape, the rivers it had made for me to swim through, the beasts it had made me defeat. It didn't vary much from other times I had awoken this same way: the cell you cant escape, the identity you cant remember, the thing stuck to your feet that cuts your flesh everytime you move, the explanations that are not given of why you suddenly find yourself laying there. It had been two months allready since I began having such horrifying ilusions, which I started taking as a mental sickness. People who I have talked to about so say that the big majority of your dreams eventually are a slight demonstration of what your future is going to be like, but I don't give a shit about that.  
I know, for sure, that somehow those statements were right, but I cared mode of my mental health, which was already loosing it's sanity and driving me insane. I had to be sick, and needed to go to the phsycologist. That was the only logical explanation I could thing of at the time. Because well, it's not common to dream yourself to be slowly dying almost every night of the month. If you keep on having that sort of dreams, its because it means something that your mind had apparently noticed but your own self not.  
Why can't I handle those dreams? I mean, its my mind and my own body, I had to be capable of controlling it somehow, to take over control the wild self I was currently falling to the knees of, obeying everything that was told to me. Like, I could simply imagine the cell vanishing away, my feet freed of whatever was sticking to it, my identity being recovered within the wink of an eye. But I'd be too weak, knowing myself. I can't control my own, because I know I'm not my own. There is someone besides me inside this body, a secondary character taking over the rol of the main character. Am I turning into the secondary character of the tragedy of my life? Because thats what it would be if someone ever wrote a book about it.  
My thoughts were briefly interrupted by the sudden feeling of a burning sensation that swifted and danced in my left ankle and ran all the way up to my calf like an athlete. It was just a matter of time until I found myself crouching in pain, firmly grabbing my left leg with both hands, perhaps attempting to reduce the pain, attempting to hold the squeaks of pain inside of me. I wasn't winking, nor breathing correctly. Actually, the thing of breathing in an accelerated way was a product of my self instinct, I think. Because when I began feeling the burning heat I completely lost my shit, and the control of my own lungs. I was completely lost myself on the fact that my leg felt being roasted in a BBQ.  
In a quick way, I grabbed the quilts covering my bottom part and threw them away like a frisbee. The outcome of was not the one I expected to see. I guess it was a neutral discovery. I was surprised not to see any cut, any twine lashed to the tendon, or even the slightest signal of a burn. I was surprised to have a perfect glance of my leg in flawless conditions as it always have been, with the sturdy pain gone perhaps with the quilts that right now were piled up on the ground.

It wasn't nothing to worry. Just a leg in perfect state.

My hands moved all the way to hold my face, as I sat in butterfly position and rested my elbows on my legs. My fingers slided to play with my hair and turn it a real mess, while I released a big breath of relief from the depest bottom of my lungs. What had my mind become, in order to make me dream of pain and actually feel it? Indeed, it had happened before, but I just thought of it like some sort of bad position in which I slept in, or either the bite of any mosquito that had decided to spend the night at my place. Now it had gone for real, because the pain I had just felt was like alowing 3 tons of hard steel to rub your leg untill all the skin rips off and you get a glance of your raw meat falling into pieces and staining your bed in blood. 

Fuck off, that's not how logic works.

The vibration of my phone against my bed table suddenly slapped me back into my self consciousness. I turned my head around , wondering where the annoying noise sound came from, just to see the aparatus was almost falling off the table from all the shaking, I could tell. It was way better to try and catch it before it felt, because I would totally collapse trying to pick it up from the floor without climbing off the bed. It was challenging to stretch my arm and smash my arm on the sidekick and pull it to me. But not impossible.

The guilty criminal who dared to bother me at 6:39 am was not much than a clumsy 21-22 year old aged ray of sunshine with blonde hair and brown eyes, who sticked out his tongue in the most horrid way possible for his profile picture, and since I have memory, has always been seen with orange headphones he never drops away from him. The total of missed calls was around 16 as far as the phone could register. Nevermind- 17. I slowly slided the green phone icon to the left, slow enough to make me seem I was cleaning the screen of cream or any sticky substance. It left me time to think what to tell him once I placed the phone on my ear to hear his voice at the other side of the line, untill I heard that jerky pitched sounds known as human words. Instead I just dropped my phone when that jerky voice shouted my name through the phone.

"Hide please, I had just awoken up, you dweeb." Trying to hold the impatience and desesperation inside for as long as I could resist, I laid back down and try to chill for a moment.

"That's a shame! Sorry for interrupting your sweet dreams, my princess! How many sheeps over the fence this time?" The voice at the other side of the line said. I could tell Hide wasn't far from my current location, because the noise I heard outside: the cars passing by, the few girls talking around, all of it was also heard on the phone. I couldn't even believe myself of how well I had managed to smile at the moment. "Peas below your cushion? Rats crawling around? It must be the rats, they're just looking for their cinderella anyway, and I forgot to cover all the holes. Will you proceed to punish me , my Lord?"

"None of that, Nagachika,"

"There must be a fairy tail roaming around your house," Hide's high pitch voice lowered down enough to become Alfred Penningworth-style. I rolled my eyes, huffing to the nothing as he proceeded bothering my sleeping issues. I could just afford to smile, as I turned heads to the window and stretch my neck to give me enough heigh to see him moving hands and brushing his hair, phone on hand, at the other side of the street. His acting is pathetic, but he has it clear and wants it to be that way. I wondered what people that walked around or that passed by him on their cars thought he was doing. Perhaps, trying to catch a fly.

He was on the same outfit he spends his entire life with- green cargo pants folded in a way his knees weren't exposed to the sunlight, a black zip jacket with yellow sleeves, orange in the wrist zone. His hair was messy and gone wild, he wore yellow, orange and black sneakers I can't even imagine the smell of. 

"The train's going to leave soon," he said rubbing his blonde locks "And you're half naked chilling at home. You dissapoint me. You dishonor your family, Ken. You must be dirty as a mop right now"

"I swear to god, if you're watching over my window right now, I dont know if you'll continue breathing when I get down there. " I threatened. My window was fortunatelly at the front side of the apartament, but it wasn't high enough to allow a person sneak peek through it, not even if that person walked 9 streets away. "Besides, I always take baths at night, and you know that."

Hide placed a hand on his hips and tilted his body to the right, his face pressed to the phone. "As far as I know I have never taken a bath with you, and I don't seem like the guy who wants to. My apologies Kaneki, I just called you ugly."

I shook my head. "Idiot. Not in that sense. And thank you so much, you should look at a mirror sometimes, you know?"

"I see Xavier Samuel smiling back at me whenever I look at mirrors, striking sexy poses while saying 'Woah, Hide. You look like a sexy Twilight vampire. Oh wait, you are! Tell me the secret to your success! Tell me what is your workout for those delightfull abs!' and I just smile, because being handsome is natural for me." The funny thing is that I actually sneaked by the window frame to find Hide doing-- or at least attempting to strike Abercrombie male model poses in front of my laughing neighbours. For once, I thought that those poses were made on purpose for me, and not for them, because they had heard him talking like a butler, but suddenly this guy was shaking hips and swayin his arms up and down on different styles like if he was suffering of an epilepsy attack or at least practicing the tryouts for a new Power Ranger season. He once told me he was looking forward the role of the red ranger, which he continuously repeats references of. 'This isn't what the red ranger would have said', 'I'm taking the role of the red ranger and driving this group work to success', 'The red ranger's gonna be proud of me for this!'.  
What a childish and immature thing was watching the Power Rangers at the age of the early 22's, but Nagachika is Nagachika. And he's... Special. In a good way. It might be normal for Hide or for me, but definatelly not for other people.

Hearing him call himself a beauty can esily be the best joke ever made for those who knew him, including me. If I had drank something before, I would be probably spitting and choking all over the room, but I managed to keep it cool. "Is it? Don't you call those stuff 'Miracles that happen once in a billion times'? And I don't think you have abs, or you see Xavier Samuel striking poses to you in a mirror. Besides, he has a girlfriend, and you don't." 

"Kaneki, stop being a dipshit ,I'll apply cold water to that burn later, but The Train's leaving"

•• 

It was hard to move and stick around in a city such like Philadelphia, even worse in one of those days when the cars stuck in the traffic don't move at all, and the large crowds of pedestrians looking forward to go to work infest the sidewalks that drove everywhere in the city. But you could say, that the cities within the perimeter of Pensylvannia where mostly happy, and where places in which people could really enjoy what the definition of a good life was. Phily was charged to the top with things to try and do besides a new wave of jobs arriving everyday, and nice places to spend the while in any day you're free to go to study or give your handwork on the job. And Phily is a pretty handsome city as well. Not like New York.  
I mean, my mother had always taught me the mentality in which you never actually see the sun there from all of the pollution, there's a lot of noise, the traffics are way more hard to escape from, and the way larger crowds of pedestrians can swallow you up when the lights to cross the road turn green.  
It sounds like if humanity had built up it's own hell; you basically become a slave for work once you get there. Or that's what my mom said. That sentence was kind of her slogan every time I asked her how living in the city that never sleeps was like. Partially because before I was born, she had lived there for around 6 years working for the government when she said she couldn't hold on more to the strain and the difficulties that living in that megalopolis brought. Every time I mentioned her that I wanted to go visit it, no matter if it was a road trip, by plane or by bus, she would keep mentioning the same thing , like if it was a line she had to memorize for her past job there: 'New York is lethal.'  
There was this time when I finally stopped asking. My mom never got angry at me because I kept repeating and asking the same thing about New York over and over, but I finally took the idea out of my head of visit it when I understood that life in Philadelphia is simple and easier that in there, and I should comfort myself for the fact of being born in it and having to spend the rest of my life in it, or until I take the desition of moving to a more challenging city. Meanwhile, I could assure myself that I would be happy the time I spent here in Phily, or at least it was for my mom. She had taken the right desition to move here, but pherhaps too late.  
The reason why I probably dislike New York is because the effects of the non-stop hardworking my mom had to go through to try and built her life with me in it had left its marks on her and her health. She told me she didn't sleep at all at all, or eat well or do exercise, because there where a ton of things to focus on, and the basic needs of a human were the minor priorities to take care about.

She came here and raised me here with the leftovers of the energy New York had taken away from her, perhaps on time for me to reach an age in which I could sustain myself and make my own life. She kept living just to ensure I was taught the right thing to do until she felt her crops were showing its fruits for a long time of dryness in the land.

Afterwards, she collapsed and never got up again. It was a shame to leave me alone when I was just about to reach my early 13's, but I eventually found a way to kept moving on, not because it was the right thing to do, but because that's what she probably wanted for me. I found a job, which is illogical, because youths aren't supposed to work. But it was easy in some sort of way. I stood straight at the moment to talk to the bussines owners and told them the story briefly with a strong voice, toning up the words 'dead' and the sentence 'have to pay school by my own'. They would let me work 2 or 3 nights to ensure the police came and saw no child at work. But they would let me, without hesitation. Because they're human. And they understood.

Maybe they talked to their families about me, or else I got popular in the area out of nowhere, and I eventually got more help of those who suddenly encountered me in the street and recognized me. I was happy to be able to pay school and get food at the same time-- my mom's brother James, who currently lives in Minnesota, took care of the business related to paying the rent of the loft I currently live in. Hide's family helped me too, and allowed me to spend the days I couldn't get any food to eat at their house, and even though they never knew my mother, they knew perfectly what the situation was and how to help. I could tell they were my biggest support; as Hide and I live not more than 4 streets away from each other, they could easily take me to the station where I took the bus to school.  
Now it's way more difficult, because we have to ride the train. But I'm kind of happy to have reached this far, enough to enroll in one of the most prodigious mixed arts academy every built. That was maybe my mom's one and only goal: watch me success. But far away from New York.

The train station of W Mt Airy ave , is kind of the easiest access to the Allen's lane arts center, where I study photography and 2D arts, besides acting as well. I always took the train that left around 6:45 in the morning with Hide, even though we both splitted ways at a certain stop in Sherman street, which creates an intersection that goes north, south, west and east. He does not study in the same academy as I. He has some big bussines to do at Philly's Central High School. Not only that, but during the afternoon he works on a dance academy not as far as the Central High from Allen's to pay his enrollment, which is quite expensive. Anyway the dance academy is known because teachers are well paid. I could work with him, but when I dance I seem like some ant fighting dessesperatelly to avoid drowning in the ocean. I work at a local -but very bussy- cafe near McCallum street named Anteiku, which is not as good as the dance academy, but it's in the perfect paying range for me, because my academy, as it only focuses on arts, is not as expensive as those where they teach you even how to cut a cow's heart when you're aiming to be a fireman or something.

We always take the front seats at the right side of the train, right besides the window. It's got a nice view of the forests around, and Hide loves reminding me of how he and his father saw reindeer and other lovely creatures walking around the woods while they went camping on Saturdays.  
I truly admire how Hide can talk about his father like if he wasn't gone. He was just like mine. They barely show themselves around, even though I think my father is dead by now, he had serial problems with drugs and stealing the last time I ever saw him. I think Hide's father taught him since the beginning to be strong if he ever left and never came back -he works for the military- so that's what distinguishes Hide from I, when I can't even talk about my mother without starting to shiver and weakening my voice tone, as if it shivered with me. Hide avoided to mention mom when near me as much as possible.  
But see, the forest and Hide's stories mixed into one made me forget about her in some sense. Hide's stories were the same in respect to the plot until the climax, where the animal they had spotted always changed, and with it, the out come of the story, which made them funny in it's own peculiar way. I trully enjoyed listening to his storytelling while he was still on the train.  
"..And there was a big grizzly bear looking straight at us, maybe wanting my chocolate sadwich!" He said on a loud voice tone, like if the idea was to storytell the whole wagon. "But you can't feed the wildlife because its forbidden, and the rangers makes you pay real hard. So my father managed to scare the bear away with the techniques he uses to mark his territory with his comrades at the army, and fortunatelly, the bear left. And I on nom nomed my yummy lemon pie within the safety of my pa."  
I choked a smile, while driving my sight away, knowing we would reach Hide's stop within the blink of an eye as I saw Sherman's intersection showing up. " I thought it was a chocolate sandwich, not a lemon pie." 

I truly loved Hide's surprised reaction when he noticed he had fallen into his own lie.

However, by noticing the bus started to slow down, I think Hide didn't stop to think something beliebavle and just said the first thing of all the crap he had in mind. "Now that you mention it, the bear had eaten the sandwich without me noticing because-- because he was a ninja."

He began packing up like if he wanted to leave the conversation like, real hard.

I raised a brow. "You never mentioned that."  
He didn't ignore me, but it was evident that focusing on climbing down the train was more important than to answer, as he picked his back pack up and headed to the door. Before leaving, he said an "I did" that went straight to my eardrums like a lightning bolt, but once the door closed, those 2 words echoed and rumbled in my ears, and everything became silent. That was just the signal that told me I had to get my headphones out and a good book to read, because there were 36 minutes of diference between Allen's and me. 36 sitting there and doing nothing, if it wasn't for the Hamlet book I had to brush up as a homework.  
••  
"-Lord Polonius  
'With what, I' the name of God?'  
-Ophelia  
' My lord, as I was sewing in my closet,  
Lord Hamlet, with his doublet all unbraced;  
No hat upon his head; his stockings foul'd,  
Ungarter'd, and down-gyved to his ancle;  
Pale as his shirt; his knees knocking each other;  
And with a look so piteous in purport  
As if he had been loosed out of hell  
To speak of horrors,--he comes before me.'  
-Lord Polonius  
'Mad for thy love?  
-Ophelia  
'My lord, I do not know;  
But truly.."  
"I do fear it." I said for myself, completing Polonius' daughter's dialogue. As the red cover of the book closed when my hand pushed it to the side, rubbing the red rose and the skull drewn on it with my fingers to try and wake them up for passing too much time still, I laid back and stabbed my eyesight up, in the steel roof of the wagon, before so placing my book next to the enrollment dark green folder the headmistress of Allen's had given to me. I was enough dizzy to challenge myself to keep on reading Hamlet within the shaking and the curves the train was taking, but I think I read just enough; it was fine where I had left to continue after class. "I do fear it", was I going to need to quote Ophelia in a future? Maybe not just Ophelia, hopefully any character in Shakespare's tragedy. I don't really know for what, maybe just to sound interesting, not an egghead, but enough intellectual in acting class, or to complete a statement I suddenly feel the urge to end up, if someone ever comes up with one.

I must have been really bored to think of those stuff nobody really cares or pays attention to: Quoting a book "almost as old as the bible" for some. Pherhaps because 20 minutes had passed by allready, and I had no more inspiration from the muses to keep on reading, or do anything else. 

There was this weird force who pulled me to the front, almost catapulting me to the wall next to the doorway if it wasn't for my animal instinct which automatically had made me grab the railing of the seat behind me. The train had forced stop. Maybe an animal had just suddenly decided to cross through the railway- have I mentioned yet how carefull are the drivers with the wild life inside the city? 

Was it an emergency code, or any operation related with saving energy from the machine underneath the floor my feet were stepping on? No. Not at all. This was a stop I hadn't seen before. This one was just recently built, it was brand new. I stared out the window to catch a sight of the new stand, which comparing to the it's bright red colored roof with yellow columns holding it, which had no cheap announcement banners or papers glued on it. The seat was pure white, like if someone had just finished bleaching it and washing it with extreme care, and the newspaper box was shining green, with the pile of newspapers inside it intact.

Strangelly I barely saw anyone waiting for the train standing in that stop. I just catched a single sight of a black leather boot that, I suppose, belonged the one who asked for the trainstop all of sudden , who apparenty was allready on it's way to climb to the transport and in the fraction of a second was standing still at the doorway of the wagon, attempting to find a seat. 

As riding the train was a continuous activity Hide and I had to repeat from monday to friday, we allready knew most of the faces that accompanied us on the transport. We could easily tell which one was going down on which stop, and who was going up; the passengers that went on the train knew who we were as well, I think they identified Hide better than me because of his storytelling. But this dude was definatelly not from around. His outfit seemed neglected and poorly cared for, perhaps in the sense of making this guy look threatening, to slightly feign to be some sort of kid you should never cross roads or exchange eyesights with. 

His dark blue, almost raven hair -I could tell- was wild and tousled, falling freely around his neck, specially on the nape. His eyes were also deep blue, but they had no emotion inside. They were just like decoration, they seemed drop dead, they seemed to show no feeling at all, maybe anger or disgust somehow. The black leather leather jacket he was wearing was slightly dirty by the collarbone zone, but the dirt was covered with a purple scarf that downfalled like a cascade over his back. The black leather boots, indeed, belonged to him. I could basically say that he was wearing all black except for the purple scarf that lighted a bit the bitterness of the motorcycle rider attire.

On the sly, I was carefully watching sideways the passengers around that had filled almost all the spots to sit by the time, and it seemed to me that all of them were judging with glances at this newcomer, just like I was. And I just had the sudden Idea that this guy was no more than a trouble maker like those who come and go. But people were very straight in relationship to rules of conduct and behavior inside the public transport and I knew it. I had seen before how skaters who placed their feet on the chair infront of them were kicked out without hesitation, how smokers were bounded to leave inmediatelly, and how those who dared themselves to scratch the window were forced to pay for new ones. I had nothing to be scared about if that was the case.

I mean no trouble Ken.

"Hey scumbag. Move."

I felt like he was just about to hold out a gun and aim at me right when his eyes falled on me, scratching my face with his eyesight. To be sincere, I felt threatened in the minor feeling, but I didn't knew what to expect about his next movements. I know I might have been giving a lot of credit to a person I probably wasn't going to see anymore, a person that could simply be heading to a medical date or something, a person, in brief, that couldn't appear once again infront of me for a long time. But I had for sure we were heading towards the same direction. I found out he was also taking with himself a dark green folder all the students enrolled in Allen's had to take with, and a book with a red cover with a rose and a skull drewn on it. The same dark green folder I was carrying right besides me, the same book I had just closed a while ago. 

This guy was heading to Allen's with me.

Just before I could craft some sort of excuse to avoid his presence sitting on the seat Hide had left vacant for the remaining while, the guy droped himself roughly against the it, crossed legs, and bent his arms behind his neck, acomodating his own like if he didn't knew manners at all, like if he was at a crib full of gangster people and had to gain their respect by showing himself as a badass dude who didn't cared about fucking anything at all. But no one said a word.

My mom was always acting weird whenever people with no manners showed around, so maybe I got that from her. I didn't wanted to sit next to him, I felt insecure even though I knew people were watching over him carefully. I was uncomfortable in so many levels, and wanted to go find a more polite person to sit next to. But after that kind of entrance, I was sure no one wanted to change seats with me.

But, no problem right? Maybe this person isn't in the same class as you, and he should be friendly.

No problem.

No problem at all, Kaneki.

I was glad to see I would be sharing train rides with another enrolled in Allen's, and I was glad about it. Or at least I tried to convince myself of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ▓A/N▓  
> I know litterally nothing of Philadelphia.  
> Gomenasai :S  
> -Batman


	3. 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The owner finally discovers himself

The stranger and I didn't talked at all during the ride. Well It seemed like I didn't have enough guts to turn around and handle a nice conversation with him, taking into advantage that both him and I were enrolled in Allen's and that could have given us some thematic to talk about. I could have talked with him about the current Hamlet homework all of the Allen's students had to do-ask him if he had enjoyed the book untill whatever spot he was at, or if he had read any of Shakespeare's works before besides that drama, or either ask him which arts was he looking forward to study. I could really have aforded to talk about literally anything, but everytime I turned to him, besides not paying me any attention at all, I could really feel that he would burn me straight to the ground. His eyes never stopped frowning as the train moved on, his hands that held the back of his neck never changed position, as well as his feet. I don't know if I'm exaggerating a lot, but that lad seemed like one of the members of some graffiti gangs I had spotted downtown, not forgetting to mention that those guys almost beat the shit out of me if police officers weren't near at the time.

When we both arrived to the stop infront of Allen's lane, we splitted ways into different entrances to the building, even though it was still kind of awkward to step out the train by the same door as him. I followed him with my sight as he kind of walked around to the left and dissapeard behind the corner of the block when I lost track of him. I was just making sure which paths I was to avoid to prevent myself of catching up with him again. He semed taking his classes at the far end of the entire place, which was such a relief; catching sight of him again would be definatelly placing myself in risky business I didn't even wanted to wander about. The guy looked dangerous enough.

But once I crossed the doors of entrance A, I felt these 2 tons of bricks over my shoulders suddenly shatter away, and a smile full of ease being crafted on my lips as every single person enrolled in the academy that I had gotten pretty well with smiled back at me and waved hello. This was trully a place in which I could take a breath of every stressful, annoying event that happened beyond the walls of the building; Allen's is partially surrounded by a small forest around, which also gave you the sensation that anything that happened inside an edifice surrounded by nature could never go wrong, besides having in its majority a nice quantity of nice people you could always count with.  
I could feel this nice wave of soft breeze filtering through the windows that smelled like fruits... like pine trees and other good smelling plants; a breeze that even though was weak, could tumble me down and make me stay still, laying on the floor, as others beholded how it's aroma full filled my body and vanished myself with the wind. It was this air current that joined along the sunrays going through the shiny glass of the windows, and the artistic and innovative design of the interior of the block-in respect to furniture and decoration - that made me realize this was almost like my second home. I felt better here than in my loft actually, maybe because of the fact in which I was fully alone there and with nothing to do, surrounded by a non perishable silence inside the flat, excepting when my neighbors hosted parties usually on sundays.  
It's fun when they do so. But when either they don't invite you, or they have a disgusting musical taste, is not really enjoyable.

Allen's had a straight passage that went through the whole main structure, driving to other different halls that were all about art classes between 2D and 3D, besides the reception and the manager and headmistress of the center's office, where they used to make conferences and meetings wih the other members of the staff of the center. The empty areas on the walls were fully decorated with billboards, banners about events that were about to happen, art proyects from those who were currently working on 2D classes, displayers for the 3D sculptures that were about to be aired to a gallery at the south of the city, notifications for the elders who were visiting the summer camp of the academy, and posters with nice quotes for everyone to keep on going with the good work. Though, a large portion of the left wall was kinda missing; there was this huge open entrance with no doors there that lead to a spacious passage full of plants and vines that hung over it's ceiling that drove people straight to the main garden, where most of the enrolled used to meet at for the beggining of the day. I walked past the crowded hall and swifted between shoulders and backpacks, stretching and sliding through every open area I could find to elude getting swallowed by the huge amount of people attempting to make their way through as well. I got out of the crowd almost without success, but I was lucky not to have dropped anything as I made my way; that would have been a real catastrophe. Fortunatelly I reached the door to the gardens safe & sound in one piece. It was kind of strange to see that many people around anyway.

As I expected, the plants around the passage were pretty well cared for- like a gold ingot. I guess whoever thought of the design of the center thought specially of making every place special by decorating it with flowers, innovating furniture or abstract sculptures, no exceptions, to make sure those who practiced 2D paint with vinyl and watercolors, crayons or any coloured material, had always something beautifull to sketch, or some sort of inspiration to get from anything around them. The academy itself was like the lost paradise. If there was only good music playing, even though the sounds that went through my pluged headphones and flooded my mind covered the missing hole.

Flowers were hanging all around the roof. And I feel the necesity to highlight the way in which the sunrays slided through every piece of the deck that wasn't covered by vines, and you could feel yourself like if you were prancing through the jungles of the amazon without leaving the city. The passage was enjoyable to go through, even though it was about 9 metters long, and you could be standing at te other side in the garden without much need of more than 13 steps. The inminent light that stood suddenly on my eyes as I exited the pass was almost blinding, but also felt like the niciest sunrays you could catch through the day.

Just by turning around, Uta was allready calling for me at the far end of the gardens, pretty edged away from the rest of the generation, laying below one of the trees that, in help of the gardeners, the students had planted to make the air cleaner and make the place look better; I wonder if the academy seemed like a dump before all the mnature was placed on it.   
The tree was Uta's favourite place, I could tell.  
Him, Suzuya and me were the ones in charge of planting it, and to see it blooming and giving away it's fruits was just-- perfect. Because it was a tree of our own, and had grown lovely beneath our care.

He brushed his shaved left side of the head just before accomodating his sunglasses and pulling up from his laying position, an apple on hand.

I expected as much of the newcomer of the train as from Uta, because I knew both cases were to be the same. Uta's not the guy everyone would hand a cup of tea and dialogue with all of sudden- He's more o less the guy that really gets along with the people that dare themselves to try something challenging and talk to him.

"You're quite late today," he said as I settled down infront of him. "At what time did you catch the train?"  
"It's not that I catched the train late; if I miss the one of 6:45, the following to come would be arriving about this time to the station." I comented, before placing my arms behind me and resting my body weight on them "It's because there's this new stop that I hadn't noticed before."  
Uta seemed to know allready what stop was I talking about. He had an exam on geography back at high school and had to learn all of Philly by memory, but still he keeps the hobby of thecking the city's updates in respect to new buildings and that.  
"The one that goes around the X intersection where your friend leaves, you mean."  
I drove him a friendly grin, knowing that it was unusefull to try and refresh Uta of the changes the city has had.   
"Yeah, kind of. And there's a new guy from there, I guess."  
That was the fact of the day Uta had learned today; there was a newcomer.  
Uta shook his head in amazement, and flashed himself when the words new guy suddenly slipped off my mouth and made their way imto my sentence.  
"Ooooh! That's good! I wonder if you allready befriended him, or have his phone number, or blood type-- I need to meet him!" He kneeled down in a position which he kind of threatened me to spit out his name, birth date, adress, email, illnesses, allergies and personal health information.  
"Hold your horse there." I stretched myseld and recovered balance "It's not that I love making friends with strangers. Besides... I don't really know, Uta. I don't know if he's the friendly type. I mean, riding the train with him was kinda awkward. He was... pretty intimidating."  
"But you usually love newcomers, don't you."   
I shook my head unconsciously"I perhaps do but, you know that I'm the kind of person who remains coherent with the first impressions of the people for the rest of my life and treat them like so."   
For a moment, that seemed to be the final dot to the conversation.  
There was an atonishing silence, mostly vanished by the conversations that surrounded us and danced through the air creating a deep echo. I began thinking if I really was just over thinking everything related to the newcomer, bur his face seemed so peculiar, like if I had seen him somewhere else before. I stabbed my sight on the grass field below me wondering, and as a sudden themagic change, I raised it back again to face Uta briefly once the bulb shined and the idea express had arrived to break the silence just in time.  
"Maybe you should be the one talking to him first; you seem far more interested on him than I, and that's not a thing I'd like to stick my head into " I argumented quickly.   
Uta crossed his legs, butterfly styled, and leaned his head to mine, almost brushing noses.   
"Do you think I could?" he said, like if he wasn't sure of his own social skills ans capabilities "I mean, I just want to know how his face shape might be like; it could be fascinating making a mask for him, one I have never tried before."  
"You don't even know him and allready want to bathe his face on vaseline?" I argued, driving him a calculating look.  
"That's how I get friends, Kaneki. You should learn from me," he leaned back again, and drove his sight to he left, proud of himself and his befriemding methods "If you approach to them seeming to need help with work, they take you as a professional serial bussinessman."  
Pfft, like if I ever needed social advice from him or something. Like if I didn't know how to make friends.  
"I doubt people see you that way" I stood up, just after checking my watch to realize it was almost time to head back to the Theatre block. "I mean, you probably dialogue like a professional business man, but you don't dress as one."  
Uta got the message and stood up with me, just when the loudspeaker turned on and boomed with information, announcing the beggining of the journee.  
Just before, Uta took his apple,and chomped it.

●●

My schedule of classes was partially accomodated from works that included moving and performing choreographies, to proyects in which no special movement was needed at all, besides sketching with the hands and erasing lines. Most of my classes were taught by the same 36 year old teacher, who came to Philly from Quebec, Canada, who knew perfectly fine how to manage 6 different arts at a time. Offcourse, the outcome of his proyects are always outstanding, and were a thing to mention honorably. His cooking skills are flawless as well, he knows how to mix different spices without even knowing their names, he knows the perfect cut for each slice of meat, and his dishes are always a pleasure to the zest.

Tsukiyama Shuu exceeded in talent to percieve scents, parfums and flowers with a nice smell, as well as knowing what different their meanings were in floral language. He was trully someone to admire for his skills pursuing the perfection, and how he used to motivate his students to get the results they wanted by telling them the secrets of what his success was due to. He trully was the kind of teacher this academy deserved.

But there were some aspects to consider before delivering him such title.

He was... and still is somehow flamboyant in a style the big majority of people do not understand. He's kind of menacing in a sense he pretends not to appeal, he's excessivelly exagerated in respect to behavior and atraction to other people; he's much of a stalker once you get in too deep with a friendhsip with him. Some students, such as Uta, kind of understand his conduct and what is it due to: the fascinating pleasures of gratitude for the various gifts of nature to humanity Tsukiyama has noticed with his soul and heart: such as the capability to cook excelent gourmet foods, to recreate historical and fictional events by interacting and roleplaying with others to create an preeminent masterpiece, to pick a pencil -the ultimate human being creation- and draw lines over a paper, designing transports, weapons, buildings, fashion, and hundreds of stuff more... But the other amount of people, including me somehow, feels extremedly awkward when you spot him around. Besides using this...complex...french vocabulary the bulked large quantity of students in this academy does not understand, and wearing and dressing as his personality tells him to - always wearing expensive and colorfull evening dresses, dyeing and staining his hair of different colors from the purple palette- according to my own personal opinion, Shuu is not a man you're fully comfortable next to.

As I was saying just before, my theatre, 2D arts, 3D arts, photography, dance, music classes are all taught by him. If he ever misses a class, Suzuya is there to make replacement, but mostly, to make us company- he only knows 2D arts, but doesn't take it as a serious job. He attempts. But Tsukiyama almost never misses class as far as I know, but anyway Suzuya spends the while around because he's somehow attached to Shuu and wants to learn from him, even if he skips class-he's not from my schedule.Suzuya Juuzou is like another completely different freak show. He's about 16, but he acts as a 12 year old for a certain illness he had told Uta and I about, but not clearly. White hair he's been continuously dyeing without his step mother's content, a fresh, disheveled white t-shirt, some shorts and red slippers comformated basically the suzuya that dressd the same way everyday. Such a casuality to share with Hide.

The Theatre is not much than an ample room with wooden floor, with a smal stage measuring around 2 park benches wide, 3 dining tables lenght and about a stair of height. The remaining space is free of chairs and others whenever there's no play ongoing. Sometimes, taking into advantage the wide free space, Tsukiyama brought an adjustable stretch barre and changed the roleplaying classes for ballet, which was unnacceptable for me. Somehow the barres helped us to wide our flexibility, which was like the only tool I ever used when those changes occurred.

Tsukiyama was awaiting for us wearing an extravagant pinkish evening dress, brushing his hair and sitting on the stage, legs crossed, like if he had to wait an eternity to catch sight of us again, yet his face expression looked particulary calm. Suzuya was sitting next to him, swinging his legs up and down and smashing his red slippers against each other, awating for the class to start, I could tell. As always, he stitched his right arm up and down with a red thread without feeling any particular pain.

Behind me there were about 16 more people, leaving their backpacks at the door and taking out some costumes that had been requested for the plays that were delivered to different groups we had formed the last class. 16 people who I never actually chatted with, 16 people that had made 4 groups of 4 people and had left me behind with Uta, who was in music rehersal. It wasn't weird to see me all by myself during class. It was pretty normal, even for Tsukiyama and Suzuya, which almost every class offered themselves to work alongside me.

So we were practicing Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo. I made a very good Marius Pontmercy of myself; Suzuya had taken the role of narrator and Javert at the same time, while Tsukiyama, surprisingly, had took over Uta's role as Fantine without hesitation. We had to present the final outcome in about 2 weeks.

You could say the class went very well, untill 36 minutes of pure practicing had passed by.

In our litte practice spot next to the stage, Suzuya stepped on with his dialogue on hand and looked up to the ceiling, while shaking his other hand as he rubbed his chin. "Valjean had fallen back, the light from the candlesticks fell across him; his white face looked up toward heaven, he let Cosette and Marius cover his hands with kisses; he was... Dead!" He said, basically amazed by the huge spoiler he had told himself with the last word of the guidelines. "...Wait! Valjean dies? What kind of horrible theatre play is this?"

Tsukiyama layed on the floor facing us and holding his head with his left hand, elbow on the floor, reading sort of bored Fantine's dialogues "Valjean's supposed to die since the beggining, my sweet darlig. It's all just basic plot when the main character dies, or how the grandiose Shakespare would call it... 'Cliché'"

Suzuya crossed his arms in dissapointment, and turned to him. I would have bet my monthly salary at Anteiku that he was about to kick Tsukiyama's sheets of paper and he wouldn't even mind a single bit. "That is NOT! remotelly fair."

"But you said you disliked Valjean a while ago, Suzuya." I flipped over the next pages reading askance the lines underlined with red pen I had to render for my Marius character. He turned to me with that sort of look that told me he wasn't able to remember nothing from the past 5 minutes. "I did? Well anyway, it's not like any main character deserves death or something. Everyone deserves a chance to live no matter how desesperate and cruel their actions are. Like, I wasn't supposed to commit suicide. I deserved another chance."  
"You mean Javert deserved the second chance?"  
"Yup."  
Tsukiyama grinned. "Without death, there's no fascinating plot, my dear. Take into account the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet by the grand master shakespare. Without any of them dying it wouldn't be fascinaying, you see, and Javert's suicide was just so well created....it was so creative and unique... Everything was perfectly planned since he saw Jean become the mayor of the town of his own. As I said, death is present in any book, novel, fabula...because it's natural to find it anywhere. Death is a fascinating endowment we must all be proud to own without effort, because more than a thing to fear, it's a benefit! Bur of course, I have no intentions of dying." He said with a grin.

Had I face-slapped my own so harsh before?

"In my opinion," Tsukiyama made his way back in, after Juuzo turned his paper upside down trying to see what aspect in death was fascinating accordig to Shuu's quote "Valjean's death is the pure escence of the play, don't you think? He dies in a soft, sofisticated way, happy of being loved, happy of his sins finally vanishing with the sweet harmony of God's words. It's the parfum that characterizes Victor Hugo's writting... Les Mis is the fantastique escence of the french literature!" He brushed his pride with his dyed hair and rubbed his face, afterwards twirling towards us, like if he had forgotten something to say to about his speech but making eye contact specifically with me. "That's why I chose this wonderfull piece of art for you, Kaneki. You are, indeed, going to be a lovely husband for the lovely, petite Cosette."  
I rolled my eyes. "Les Mis has nothing to do with me, mister. And I have no intentions of leaving Eponine in the friendzone."  
Tsukiyama kneeled down, returning his hands to the sheets of paper. "Dear, don't spit out words you know perfectly you don't have to. Les Mis is a very complex piece of art that not all the students in here can hold. It's another grade of difficulty that I chose specifically for you, because I know you would create a wonderful outcome for it."

Being rude wasn't bussines of mine, so I thanked him instead of telling him sincerely that the plan of attempting to make me feel importang wasn't working at all. He delivered me a sunny grin in exchange, feeling pleased of convincing me of his argument.  
"Oh my, we must head back to practicing! No more compliments for today. By the way, there's a french army jacket kind of similar to the one that Marius wears throughout the play at the back of the room. Juuzo, could you go reach for it for me? We should begin giving a try to the costumes."   
Chesire's smile was painted over Juuzo's lips as he stood up with a hop, almost tumbling into my forehead, and rushed towards the other far end of the room. Why so much enthusiasm for picking up an object, anyway? Anything that involved moving was interesting for Juuzo I guess, or either he loved to receive orders and favors from Shuu, who had allready began thinking of Suzuya as the child he never had.

...

There was this boom in my head. It was such like if I had gotten a shot to my nape but without bringing any pain or blood with the bullet. Still it had sort of the same effects on me; my eyes wide opened, my jaw droped. I was completely frozen right there where I was; I could hear Tsukiyama's voice askig me if everything was ok, but it sounded blurry, and it echoed in my head without delivering any actual message to my brain. It was just within a couple of seconds that I lost complete contact with my ear drums and everything was drowning into a noiseless silence. Everyone around me moved their lips but they seemed speechless to me. No sound came from their voices, but also from anything around. I could just hear my heartbeat, catching speed to suddenly beat with rage. I should have definitely fainted.  
The time stopped. I found myself among a blank enviroment without any actual color; the whole room suddenly became pale and dead up to the point of vanishing with the flash of a light that came from behind. What the fuck is this? I kept telling myself, when everythimg reached a final emptiness I never understood. I got the strenght to unfreeze my head, I don't know how, but it was quite simple to do so, disregarding that it was still almost impossible to move my other body members. Maybe it was done on purpose, just to allow me to turn and stare to Juuzo's silhouette, as the only remaining living object I could spot around. He was still running towards the wardrobe but in slow motion--actually he wasn't moving at all. His feet were suspended in mid air in his hoping position , as well as his body. My eyes zoomed in and out all by their own, making me feel dizzy and see everything around shatter into glass pieces that turned imto stone.  
His name echoed and bounced on the walls in my empty mind. I tried to spell his name, but as much as I attempted to even scream from the deepest depths of my lungs, I couldn't make an actual sound. I tried to speak other words, but I wouldn't even be able to listen to my own thoughts if they weren't nothing but Juuzo's name.  
Then I began listening to my voice squealing in a very low and microscopic volume... It was very blurry to hear, but somehow I knew it was working. I kept charging up my voice against the emptiness that stopped me from mooving; Juuzo didn't actually payed me attention, but at least I could see he was back into moving his feet, slowly gaining speed. Whatever barrier was holding him was getting weaker everytime I screamed his name, but I heard my own much clearly the more I shouted over him, which was a sign of progress to escape this sort of ilsion.  
Then his silhouette was vanished away by the blankness of the space like a sweeping transition in a power point presentation. And the light that had dissapeared everything suddenly started shaping the objects of the room and giving them color, as well as allowing me to hear back again Tsukiyama's voice gaiming volume each time more, who was now shaking me back and forth attempting to wake me up from my reverie state. Everything was back to normal within the wink of an eye; the conversations around, Shuu's interactions with me, the noise of people walkig around and trying on clothing, laughing, talking ... Everything. But my body didn't allowed me to answer to Shuu, or turn to anything else.   
I finally said his name, and I'm pretty sure Tsukiyama heard so, and tilted his head kind of confused.

"...Rei."

"Kaneki is everything well?"

Rei. REI. REI.

"REI!"

There where sounds of some kind of wires unhaging. They were to come from a single spot, but I heard them everywhere around. I twirled and twirled over my seat, but couldn't see where the source of the noise came from. All of it was followed by a loud crack that muted every single noise for a second.   
Everyone turned around, atonished like meerkats with a gunshot in the distance, wondering where the noise had come from, but suddenly the place was flooded in chaos, desesperation, phones ringing and calling for help...a lot of screaming which still sounded blurry for me. I couldn't focus pretty well among all the yelling that suddenly was created around me. My eyes tried to zoom in to catch a glance of the current situation, and i must admit, it was kind of difficult. There was this opening I took sight off, and i got a glimpse of what had just happened that had everyone being swallowed by the panic. The words 'emergency', '911', 'ambulance' and 'help' were the most mentioned around me, and somehow that fear everyone was evidencing had reached me. I didn't know what to expect.  
I couldn't wonder of what had cracked open first; or the floodlight that had just forcefully detached itself from the weak strings that kept it glued to the ceiling, or Juuzo's head.

The blood pond running down from Suzuya's brainpan was suddenly taking over the floor around. There was glass shattered all over his body, and the remaining cables on the roof were scintillating their remaining energy in electric sparks over him. Tsukiyama stood up in a quick move from my side and ran down to the back of the room to take the heavy apparatus away from over Suzuya, throwing it away and dessesperatelly trying to awake him without success; gently touching his head, pouring water over him, and as a last resource slapping his face. Nothing worked.

I wanted to help. I trully wanted to help. But the floor was swallowing me. Back again, I couldn't move a muscle. I was petrified; I couldn't handle everything that was happenig at the time.' Whatever this is, don't be happening for he love of god.' I continuously repeated as a prayer, hoping it would change anything miraculously.  
Please, don't be happening.  
Don't. Be happening.  
Don't. Be. Happening, I began shouting to myself as I saw no result happening. My eyes, wide opened, were attempting to cry, but my tears were gone and dry. My mouth locked itself and didn't allowed me to hold my head and scream to the floor where everyone could hear me. Every single remain of attempts of screaming was kept inside my mind.What was this cage about? Was I trapped in a cell once again?

Kaneki, get that cell of your head for your own good.

My sight blurred and began fading. Was I allucinating? Was I about to faint? No, no I felt perfectly fine. This didn't involved me, nor my health. This was happening outside.  
But everything was shaky and began turning sepia within a couple of seconds. The spotlight had suddenly flown back to Tsukiyama's hands and back over Suzuya's head, that was suddenly beggining to stand up and swallow the entire blood pond back into the cracked injury that had suddenly began healing very quickly. People started walking backwards into the time lapse, turning back their heads like meerkats and sitting like if nothing had happened, starting once again their conversations in a weird language. Tsukiyama had returned back to his seat next to me, and had once again began to shake me and ask me if everything was okay, but it was like if he spelled the words backwards because I literally understood nothing. The spotlight was pulled back into the ceiling, it's cables were pluged back to it, Suzuya stood up and god knows how he began running backwards as well. Eveything was going backwards infront of my very eyes, but I wasn't going along with them. I just watched everything go through with a horrified stare in my eyes.

I blinked. And everything was back to normal somehow.

"...Les Mis is a very complex piece of art that not all the students in here can hold. It's another grade of difficulty that I chose specifically for you, because I know you would create a wonderful outcome for it."

I shook my head, still having that horrified gaze of mine painted on me. I faced Suzuya concerned, but eveything on him was perfectly fine. There were no scratches, or blood, or shattered glass over him. But there was this big wave of smoke surrounding and dancing over him like a halo,crashing over his body without making the smallest reaction on Juuzo, that only I could see, because if anyone else had noticed it too, the fire alarm would be already ringing and forcing everyone to evacuate. I blinked. Maybe twice. Maybe trice, but the cloud of smoke never left Juuzo. As a last resource I attempted to calm myself and breathe, but it was kind of difficult takimg into account the whole amount of unexplicable stuff that jusg happened. Though it was pretty obvious, I knew no one would believe me if I ever told them what had ran right through my eyes.  
"Mr Tsukiyama, did... did you saw that?"I asked without taking my sight away from Juuzo.   
Shuu looked at me like if I was some sort of sick person or something, because maybe that's what I was. Like if I had just seen a ghost or some spectrum. "By 'that' what do you mean?"  
"The thing that just happened a while ago! With the spotlight and Juuzo... Didn't you see it!?"  
Tsukiyama and Juuzo exchanged sights with each other, specially Juuzo feeling weird to have heard his name among my sentence. They didn't remember anything or knew anything from what I just had seen. I was hallucinating. I must have been into a deep hallucination. That was really really really sick, but I wanted to make sure I wasn't daydreaming or anything. I looked back, and saw the spotlight threatening with falling of it's strings. It must have been enough old and rusty to begin showing signs of damaging itself with the time, but it was weird to see no one actually noticed a single thing about it. So the imagination of the spotlight falling could actually happen, taking into account the circumstances.  
"Mr Tsukiyama, I think one of the focuses is rusty and about fo fall down." I said as calm as posible, pointing at the rusty focus, makig sure his eyes followed whag I had seen. "It might be dangerous to go near it, so I suggest no one approaches the wardrobes meanwhile." Tsukiyama understood perfectly my concern, and gave it a close look, when he finally noticed that, Indeed, it was swaying from side to side with the wind, menacing to drop at the most unexpected moment. What kind of phenomenom was this? Because I had never heard of it before. What kind of phenomenon was I?

"Everyone around the far end of the room near to the wardrobes! Step to the front as soon as you can!" Shuu ordered almost automatically . The effect on the students around was inmediate, and within a couple of seconds, the back of the room was completely isolated.  
Just when one of the last lads had left the spot, the spotlight unplugged it's cables and smashed itself down into the floor. Everyone reacted to the crash and turned around; the area of floor the spotlight had smashed itself against was a mess of debris, but forunatelly below the focus there wasn't Juuzo, or neither anyone else. There was no blood pond, no panick attack, no thousand calls to the 911. Just the managers comming to se whag was happening, and the janitors bringing their stuff to clean the space as soon as possible, like if it was another accident in the job and nothing else.

This was something I had to talk with Uta about.


	4. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [A/N]
> 
> THAT WAS LONG.
> 
> Anyway. Arucard, a user from this website, told me that trains weren't something to see in Philly, partially because Philly seems to be small compared to New York or something. So I made it a tramway instead, big hero 6 style. It looks fancier, somehow. And If you guys were wondering, I placed the Tramway over the bus route.
> 
> Sorry for the huge delay. I've entered the gates of hell once again (school). Please understand.
> 
> Word count: 8174
> 
> Please keep up for my next update.
> 
> BruceWayne.

I made my way among the commotion and the disturbing curious students standing in the way between me and the exit. About half the academy parked itself around the theatre, wondering what had been such blare that caused all of the people around to stop whatever they were doing to pay attention. The turmoil was far enough strong to get to the other side of the park, but I guess it wasn't much because of the noise of the spotlight smashing itself against the wooden floor, but for the screams released once the crash took place. Those had almost made the incident seem like if someone had got shot or some more serious business, and as the crowds started to realize there was no big deal inside the room, just few of them rode away. The rest was pretty much focused on taking a glimpse of what the broken floor and crumpled spotlight looked like.

Uta had fortunately followed the same reaction along with the music teachers, so it was kind of easy to find him knowing the direction him and the lecturers had come from, which was the east side of the academy. But in the lapse of time I had gone through once I spotted his shaved head and black shades at the distance, I began wondering if it was really necessary to tell him what had just happened. Mainly because, perhaps, there was this huge chance of him not believing in any word I told him, which was very plausible. How could I tell him? Because he's not the kind of guy that ever believes in supernatural phenomenons he doesn't see with his very own eyes. But well, all of the people need someone to tell even the darkest of secrets to. Uta was that friend to me, and my brain was programmed to make me feel ashamed of myself every time I saved something I had to tell him for me. It was exactly the same with Hide, but taking into account that he was busy a large amount of time, I always considered having Uta's opinion first. I couldn't keep that sort of stuff in too much time waiting for Hide to have a break to talk to him, but I couldn't agree more with the fact that convincing Hide would be far more comfortable, successful and easy at the same time.  
Uta noticed my intentions of looking for him, and cooperated with the approaching. He didn't seemed worried once we were face to face, his face seemed divided into anxiety and interest; there wasn't even the slightest space for concern in his expression. I think he didn't know what was happening at the time, but he seemed far more preoccupied for the health and state of whatever had broken down than for any injured victim.  
"Everything ok around there?" He inquired.

I took a glance back, staring at the janitors trying to disperse the huge amount of spectators far away, attempting to demonstrate there was nothing to worry about. I couldn't hear what they were saying clearly, but for sure the words 'Broken spotlight', 'damaged' and 'calm down' were highlighted to the point of shouting somewhere in their speech.

"Kind of. A dusty spotlight fell down, but any injured." I said, turning back. "Not something to worry in a few words."  
Uta fixed his shirt and stretched his neck, aiming to catch a view of the circumstances among the commotion. One he found out it was quite impossible, taking into account the huge spectator crowd that stood on the way, and he rolled his eyes, sighting in disappointment and returned. "Yeez, I thought it had been a serious something. Nothing exciting."

Yes, Uta. There's something. But you'll never believe me.

I grabbed the split necks of my shirt and joined them together nervously. Was I going to? I was going to. No, perhaps no. This had to stay in standby. This is not easy to process. But he might understand... or else not, knowing him. Heh, he'll take me for a sick dude or something. For fucks sake, this is ridiculous.

I had to be completely sure about what I was about to spit out, and have proof for so, because that could be something that happens to everybody someday, right? I took some steps back and drove my sight back into the theatre, where people already had started to drive themselves away when the janitors finally convinced them that there was nothing to stand concerned about. I perambulated my sight around, looking for someone to put into the test, and eventually this thin, short girl with brown locks, green eyes and pale skin walked by, accompanied by two other girls. I barely knew her, but for sure, I knew she would bring a grey handbag with her every day to the academy where, I guess, she brought her lipstick, make up and all of those stuff she never missed. I think her name was Kylie, or Kayden or something, but that's not much of importance.

I need to feel a boom in my head, and then I'll have proof. Then Uta will believe me. Then my life is not going to come back to normal.

I focused my eyes well on her, almost reaching the point where they would definitely pop out. I didn't notice so, but I had stopped blinking or either paying attention to anything around me. She had become the only landscape back then, but my mind wasn't completely piercing through her movements as the rest of my body was doing. My mind was totally concentrated on making the thing work out as I wanted. There was partially nothing to highlight on her or something evident enough to test, but I knew I could try something out with the bag.

Taking into account female logic, phones, whenever you stash them inside a bag, always sink to the deepest bottom of it, and among all the makeup and stuff a girl keeps inside the bag, are always kind of difficult to take them out easily. If she had a phone inside her bag, this would have to work out, no matter if it was right at the moment, or through any time of the day. But the important thing is that I would eventually obligate myself to know whenever she was going to do so. The thing of the phone could succeed, actually. It seemed simple enough, and wasn't a bad idea after all; you could say phones to today's generation had almost become a vital organ of the body.  
I closed my eyes and tried to put my mind in blank as a way to try, and busted it with creativity as I tried to follow every noise around me and link it to Krista, or Kim or whatever. Even though, I knew that closing my eyes and emptying my mind of everything wouldn't help in a thing, because even if my mind was working on its limit to allow me to have the outcome I wanted, I hardly knew what I was doing. Maybe that wasn't the right way to make it happen, or maybe it could. It was not like I knew what I knew a single fuck of what I was doing anyway.

I heard a vibration. I couldn't feel it right next to me but it was somewhere, and somehow, the image of a judder rushed through my head but fading in slowly. It was a black wire, standing still at first. I frowned, looking forward to sink deeper into the animation and find something useful, because a quiescent metal thread doesn't give much clues, does it. The frowning apparently worked; within the blink of an eye the wire's image was completely clear, and began shaking up and down hesitantly with every vibration, such as in the Do I want to know video. It could be the phone, I kept repeating myself; you’re doing well.

The wire took speed and suddenly was going up and down like the rhythm of a convulsing heart on the screen of a heart rate monitor. It wasn't continuous; there was a limited time space between each wave of shakings that lasted about thirty seconds. The shakings eventually stopped by the time, but rose one again after about 15 seconds more, which could only mean that Kamille had not noticed that someone was calling her, perhaps. It was ringing.

She's going to grab the phone. It's her grandmother for sure. She's going to buff in antipathy as she hears the elder at the other side of the line. Everything's blurry, so I can't imagine what favor the senior's going to ask her.

I felt the sudden urge to open my eyes after some seconds, wondering if the effect was truly happening. She was no longer on my sight, so I had to search my eyes around looking for the target. I spotted her after a while, not much steps away from her original location, and indeed, she was on the phone. She was quite far away from me, so attempting desperate intent to hear the conversation from far seemed pointless. But she did buffed, and highlighted the word grandma for everyone around to hear and guess with whom she was having a conversation with.

This was getting much real.

This was no good.

I spinned on my foot just to find Uta glaring back at me, his eyes was engraved into a suspicious look, inspecting my expression with an impolite air surrounding him. He was scowling his thin, black noodle eyebrows as well, but I think he wasn't focusing on the same things as I was. He must have been in a state of confusion, trying to see what had stuck me into staring at the nothing. I couldn't even explain a thing, so I kept my mouth shut into the awkwardness of the eye contact moment we were passing by. Uta slightly separated his lips, tilting his head a bit to the left wanting to release some words away from his mouth, which after 2 or 3 seconds he regretted so, immediately locking his lips back. Considering the situation, he reconsidered and assessed his question once again.

"Is something wrong?" He arched his brows, as another gesture to look forward for answers.

I glared back. Kourtney wasn't there anymore. Even worse, nobody was actually there any longer; the space was empty like a cowboy duel set. Everyone had spread and made their own way around back to their normal activities, but the theatre room's entrance was tangled up and down like a spider's web with 'CAUTION, DO NOT ENTER' tapes. Maybe that was the thing that finally drove everyone to understand that there was nothing important to peek at inside anymore.

I drove my sight back again at Uta and nodded briefly. But it seemed to me that he wasn't pleased at all, and was expecting another answer for me to spit out. He already knew I had something to tell him, and it wasn't the right time to try and convince him from the opposite. "Not actually. Well perhaps there's... something."

I took a big and deep breath, looking about the sides just in case someone was near us and could hear my speech. "Uta. I..."

<...I suddenly can see the events that happen around me and predict the outcome of such. I know it sounds extremedly weird and seems like a paranormal shit I just came with. But believe me when I say that is absolutelly true, and terrifying at the time. It might seem frightending for you, but it's twice as horrible for me to experience. I told you about the broken spotlight, didn't I? Well no one had noticed it untill I told Mr. Tsukiyama about it, when fortunatelly everyone around it left and nobody was injured when it dropped down. But before that, Tsukiyama had asked Juuzou to get to the wardrobe and pick up some clothes from there. Juuzou would have ran towards the wardrobe amusingly, walking straightly below the spotlight at the moment it untangled from the ceiling.

The spotlight would have cracked open over Juuzo's head, it would have killed him. The entire place would be sufocated in a panic no one coul ever quit; several calls to the 911, girls crying over the floor, boys runing around without any idea of what to do. I prevented that; I saw it coming, and the time I spent staring at the images that flashed through my head about Juuzou's deadly outcome were just grotesque and sorid. If I hadn't told Shuu about the spotlight, Juuzou would be in the morgue by now. I need your help, and I have proof that my habilities work in case you don't believe me. But I need your help.>>

"..I forgot what my next class is." I muttered hesitantly, closing my eyes in a condensation between relief and dessesperation, whispering to myself how I had acted a stupid whiny little shit. My fists where squeezing each other, up to the point in which my nails could actually trespass my skin and dig themselves into my hand's meat, even though they were neatly short at the time. My eyes halfway opened once again, shamelessly staring at the ground, cursing as much nicknames and insults I knew to myself. "Do you know where I could get the schedule? I think that theatre classes will barely continue after this."

Uta forgot his suspiciousness and brushed it away, replacing his canvas of doubt gestures with a proud and satisfied smile. He thought everything was ok, just as planned, which meant he had understood the situation and had kept calm, which was a little goal I was trying to achieve, still not in the way I actually wanted.

I followed Uta back into the block, fists inside the pockets of my blue sweater pulling them down trying to rip them away from the inside. What had just happened was a clear demonstration of a movie cliché; the masked man with super powers is afraid of telling his trustful friend his dark secret, but afraid of the consequences, he decides to swallow his words up and keep on going with a normal life. I was being too cruel with myself by trying to convince me that I was going to keep on with a normal life, as it was before. I was horrified of the things I was now capable to do, I was horrified of the phenomenon my body had just accomplished itself, without any approval of mine. Even though it saved Juuzou's skin from an instant death, which was ok. Even though it avoided sinking the place into a horrible panic. By the other hand, this thing I had just accomplished could actually benefit me. Still it's too early for me to think in what sense it would work in that way, I have no idea of what a single good positive thing this thing takes along with itself, besides saving someone's life. I had read enough comics to realize that attempting to persuade myself of this being the best thing that had ever happened to me was the biggest mistake I would ever accomplish.

Benefits always have a shadowy detail that only the smartest people notice.  
Not saying I'm the smartest kid this city has ever welcomed to his arms; I learnt for other's experiences, which was totally acceptable. I was just keeping myself from exceeding from joy and trying to keep that illusion from working as much as I could.

As I made my way in the building following Uta, my hands slided from the door's handle slightly, as the door creaked while being pulled towards the door frame by a kind of brake that kept it from closing violently placed there just in case it slided off from someone's hands in any hurried case. While giving a final stare back to the scene, while the door threatened with closing itself and blocking the view like a theatre's curtains , I noticed the same slim dressed all in black silhouette from the train walking in the act, at first investigating the area as a health inspector. He clenched some low-placed caution tapes that blocked the entrance, and pulled them up, making his own entry. He went through easily, even though he literally didn't care of the alerts the janitors tried to warn him about, trying to stop him from entering the place, at first kindly, then harshly and serious as they found out they were being ignored on purpose.

The door closed. It was ok, I guess. It delivered me the feeling I needed about not caring at all as well, and minding my own business instead of sticking on into his'.

●●

It was difficult to get along with everyone the remaining time of the day. All of those who were right there at the moment the spotlight plunged down weren't pretty much focused on anything while the classes went on. Even though teachers tried to convince us that it was just an accident and the journey had to continue as it always had, all of them, including me, couldn't get out of their heads the noise of the huge crash that had happened in front of our very eyes. Not only it, but the screams of the girls, who almost persuaded everyone that they had gotten injured, but in the end it was just fear.

Most of the people were entirely speechless during the remaining time, or spent the day indoors. I tried to withdraw my own from the rest, continuously prowling around in no specific directions during recess, trying to catch as less attention as possible. I thought about what would the spectators and eyewitnesses tell their friends, roommates and families about the occurred event; of all the different versions they would spit out, trying to persuade their listeners of believing that the feeling was horrifying and ugly to experience. I thought about some lies that were to be invented and told. I thought about the probability of people trying to make themselves the victims of the scene; those who would ensure they were right beside the spot where the spotlight dropped down, those who would fake cuts related to the shattered glass that flew away, those who would speak of their friends who were gravely hurt during the occurrence, even though no one got injured at the end. I knew Philly’s people were honest, but for sure the people of my academy loved to catch other's attention.

But at the end, Juuzou and I were the only ones who had an interesting point of view to talk about, even though Juuzou wasn't aware of the huge risk he was about to place himself in at the time.

Speaking of which, Juuzou wasn't affected at all. It was an entire different thing with him.  
He seemed pretty amused for the fact of having survived such a chaos, and spent almost every class giving away compliments of how fiercely the glass of the spotlight had flown around, and the majesty the sounds of the wooden floor crushing itself and raising a cloud of dust had made. Like if that was an event that happened once in a billion chances and we had to enjoy it as much as we could. I wondered if he would have said the same thing if he ever survived his head creaking open if I hadn't warned Shuu of the spotlight. The thing to highlight is that the cloud of smoke never left Juuzou, like if he was holding a pack of lighted cigars behind him with no intention of smoking them, but not letting their flame die as well. No matter how much I rubbed my eyes attempting to vanish the effect, the cloud would eventually grow and become a deeper grey. There was another of those over Karen's head, but it was not as intense as Juuzou's, perhaps for the fact that I placed more effort on creating his vision than hers, but I never actually understood what the smoke cloud was supposed to mean.

Eventually, as hours passed by, I learned to ignore those, which began to show everywhere, maybe signposting the unknown locations of Juuzou and Karla. They twisted and twirled like a tornado around people, prancing between the crowds, running up and down among them like athletes, leaving a path to follow like the smell of good food in a cartoon. Just assuming they were like some kind of fog, by the end of the day I seemed as neutral as anyone else around. I had just started considering so as another talent; ignoring. I seemed pretty good at it, but still it was weird to catch sight of those Smokey trails knowing confidently no one but you could see them.

The noise of the bell ringing stamped the end of the journey. Chairs inside the 2DA (two dimensional art) room were pushed away harshly, releasing creaking noises as their iron feet scratched the linoleum tiles of the floor. Backpacks were withdrawn from the shelves in a quick way and the door was pulled backwards with an admirable force by all the pupils to force it open.  
There was this colossal crew of people stuck at the exit. Those who made their way out were probably pushed away by the crowds or else had a very good hit of luck. This was common to happen, and basically distinguished Friday's from the rest of the week. Everyone was rushing for the weekend plans and stuff, but I wasn't hurried at all. Maybe I am, indeed, the weird insect inside my schedules; I demonstrated actual boredom rather than the feeling of amusement and excitement for Fridays. Weekends, you could say, were basically like sending my own to a mental hospital, where you stay in a room quietly and nothing else but creaks of the door opening and closing fulfill the room's speechless environment. Sounds awful, but that's how grown up orphans live these days.  
Within the blink of an eye, excepting for my secondary teacher, Amon Koutarou, I was alone in the classroom, still sitting on my chair and packing up without any specific hurry. The feeling of being the last one in quitting the room wasn't pleasant at all, but didn't had a negative effect on me; some people really feel anxious as they see everyone leaving without them as they try to fix the disaster of their backpacks and school tools quickly. I have experienced that, and I admit it was frustrating the first times. But the effect vanished eventually. As my study books slided from my hand's hold into the backpack, the lusty and tough professor left the room, reminding himself before doing so to wave goodbye in a kind way and reminding me as well to close the door behind me. I waved him back kindly, somehow managing to actually pay attention to him.

The day outside was foggy, compared to the sunny morning; completely inaccurate according to what the forecast had presaged. Even though it was like, 3 in the afternoon, it seemed surprisingly late, maybe that was an illusion created by the damp and dark firmament that covered him in murky and gloomy quilts of thick sky cotton. The city had taken into account that aspect as well; the majority of lights from every building were turned on some seconds after the rainfall began, the city lamp posts turned themselves on, creating stars of an orange light around the streets, stops, avenues, and of course, the train station. Between the dense tides of Smokey mist, rain filtrated itself and dropped around, crafting puddles that grew bigger and bigger as time passed by, and as more of its partners joined together to create those. Pigeons bathed themselves under the pouring rain, shaking the water off when needed and rising flight once again after a while, shaking their wild wings hesitantly as they tried to break through the walls of the abundant haze and rise up into the skies where the pouring water could not reach.

After my backpack was loaded with books and weighted as much as a panda bear, I exited the room, minding of closing the door behind me just as Amon had asked me the favor to. I took runs to safe places in which the rainfall couldn't reach me: below trees, mostly. The water filtered through the leaves anyway, but there were plenty of these safe spots to stop at around Allen's that eventually crafted a safety road to the entrance where, in a few minutes, the train would make its presentation and invite passengers aboard. I took a breath at every tree, trying to get a hold of myself resting on my knees; I'm not something you could distinguish as an athletic person, even though my body is naturally slim by genes and I take with me a pretty balanced diet--almost vegan.

I took another run, having the disadvantage of, without paying any attention, stepping into one of those puddles that were spread around. By the time, around a hundred ponds were flooding the entire place, turning it into a disgraceful quagmire mixed with mud from the green zones. I stepped so hard into it; the water splashed all the way to my knee and wetted any surface of pant it could find. My knees were wet, my black pants were wet, my socks were soakened into water, but indeed, I felt the dirt in each of these segments, which made me regret take the path I took in the first instance. It was the most disgusting feeling ever; as I kept running, my shoes felt heavier and made gnashing sounds like the enormous shoes of a clown with fart-like klaxons sticked into the sole of the shoe. The mere sentiment of running with my legs bathed into water, that slowly began making my limbs have a sticky consistence, was ridiculously obnoxious.

I reached the tramway stop after a while of leg-exercising. Stating the obvious, I was soaked from head to feet.

Little black dwarf was at the stop as well, waiting for the tramway to turn back on its route and drive him back home. I wasn't planning to go directly to my home though; I had to take a longer ride to downtown which could give me the necessary time for changing my clothes to my waiter outfit as it always did. Anteiku wasn't much far from where Hide taught dance lessons. Actually, if I had to take a guess, it was, approximately, 4 streets east and 2 south from the dance Academy, yet I didn't had to take a second ride to get there as Hide did. It was easy to move around Philly, especially around this rainy time when the city looked particularly empty.

The black dressed dildo was taking with himself a red umbrella, which bespoke that he had forecasted the climate in a smartest way than I did. Hamlet book on hand as well, his outfit not showing any single trace of wet drops sliding by. As he noticed my hurried steps standing next to his, my accelerated breathing trying to get a hold of itself, he turned around and inspected my soaked figure for a second. I wondered if he did seemed worried at all for me, and as the human being he was, he would lend me a space under his umbrella.

Too bad I'm a stupid innocent shit who thinks that all the people on planet earth are angels fallen from heaven, delighted by the beautiful surroundings around them, characterized for exceeding in kindness towards others. I need to start learning that, indeed, there are faggots around as well.

The tramway's wheels shrilled against the pavement, crossing through the ponds around the railroad harshly. The kid and I gave a step back instinctively, as the dirty water splashed the sidewalk while the tramway braked quickly. Within the blink of an eye, the automatic door was opened in front of us, offering the way inside the transport.

As soon as we stepped inside, the cold breeze of the empty seats rushed to us. As lonely as an abandoned asylum, there was, indeed, no actual sign of any customer or passenger aboard besides us. I took a seat and dropped my stuff in the same seat I had always shared Hide. The youth had another perspective, and seemed not to have intentions of chatting or talking or something. He took advantage of the solitaire tramway and sat at the very far end of the cabin, taking his Hamlet book out and reading it, without any demonstration of actually being entertained with so, or enjoying the reading. He seemed to read the book without any passion in his eyes for it, like if someone literally had paid him for reading it or something.

Minding my own business, I opened my book as well and went through the pages, looking for the spot in which I had left from the morning, though I knew that reading while on movement was actually no good for my eyes. The tramway began moving within a couple of seconds pulling myself forward a bit, attached to the strings that hanged from light post to light post. As the journey downtown went on, I could appreciate what the 'Flooded Philly' looked like. The rain was really intense around the town, I told myself. There were just few pedestrians walking over the pavement catwalks, though the fogg around threatened them with swallowing them entirely and erasing them from my eyesight. The outdoor cafés were closed; no chairs our outdoor tables stood outside the locals anymore. Umbrellas weren't enough to shield the customers from the showering rain, so they were placed aside the entrances, as well as the flowerpots used for decoration. But the tramway was going that fast, that the environment around just looked like sped up lines with colors between the white to light grey palette, excepting for the deep blue mess of the sky, and hardly, I could focus on items going through in a very fast speed next to me without feeling dizzy, afterwards having a huge urge to throw up.  
Strangely, reading words on a book smaller than bacteria didn't caused any type of negative effect over me. But i must admit, reading was hard at the time. Really hard.  
Every 16 minutes more o less during the ride, I took a glance at the driver's mirror to see what was the youngster doing, but there was no actual variation rather than reading the book. I knew that somehow, I felt more passionate about classics such as Hamlet, but I couldn't avoid the fact that, even though he demonstrated actual boredom from every single line of the book, he was far more focused on it than I was. I had to, constantly, re read the sentences, because reading them but only delivering to my brain 3 or 5 words from it made it really difficult to help me keep going.  
"Indeed, la, without an oath..., I'll make an end on't,  
By Gis ...and by Saint Charity,  
Alack, and... fie for shame!  
Young ...men will... do't, if they come to't;  
By cock, they are to bla...me.  
Quoth she, before you tumbled me..?  
You promised me to wed...  
So... would I ha' done, by... yonder sun,  
An thou....? hadst not come to my bed...?"

It wasn't that I didn't understood Shakespare's complex middle aged language: I had to make sure I studied at least 140 middle age words and their respective meaning before starting the book, so the thing of not understanding Ophelia's expressions wasn't something to consider. I finally found out that my mind was avoiding understanding the book on purpose, and was trying to manipulate myself by its own, by focusing me on that other passenger at the back. I gave up on trying to control my natural instinct back because it was really annoying not to understand a single line of the book when I knew perfectly I was capable to, and in the minimum effort. I stood up, and being the dumbest person ever stepping on Philly, I walked to the far end of the wagon, occasionally holding myself to the seats to avoid tumbling down, book on hand.  
Staring at him while approaching him was actually scary. This dark aura was present by the time I was just 8 feet away from him, but there was no point on going back. It seemed to me that he had noticed my steps were on plans of marching towards him, but his eyes were stabbed on the reading. So basically, going back to my seat was like if you walked to your fridge, opened it, stared at it for five minutes, then left.

I took a big breath that caught his attention once in front of him. Our eyes met, but compared to mine, his were like a cemetery. They were, indeed, a deep dark blue, in which no emotion was allowed to enter. They were two sempiternal voids swallowing every sign of confidence left inside me.

I opened my lips a bit, still not knowing what to say. But before I could even blink, his words filtered the silence among the wagon and placed a tape over my mouth I had to research how to take off later.

"I'm not going to help you with the reading.

"I haven't said anything yet!" I protested.  
He rolled his eyes in awfulness. "I saw it coming. You're basically losing your time with me: I don't understand shit about the book either."

'...I saw it coming.’ Huh. Where had I heard those words slip from my mouth back at the incident? Maybe that was a dejabuu or something. Anything actually, but not a coincidence.  
I held myself to the edge of a seat at my right. "First of all, why won't you let me talk? If you could only listen, maybe the answer you just gave me would change completely."

He closed his book and placed it next to him, afterwards crossing his arms in sign of waiting for a response. "Specifically, talk about what? About Hamlet? Because I already said no."  
"It's not about Hamlet." I said, dropping the book at the seat and trying to conceal it's presence as much as I could. He had just stolen the words out of my mouth, placing the duct tape over it once again. I was forced to look for another emergency thematic for dialogue in the minor time possible; my entire system was shutting down because of him, so it was kind of hard to look for something else to talk about before he cut through my speeches.  
"Then about what?" He finally stated after a while of silence. We both exchanged souls with our eye contact, except for the fact that his was piercing through my mind and blocking the bullets of approval and answers. Indeed. A cold person. The first one of this species I ever knew on Philly. Must have come out of New York or some shit.

"Well, yeah." I said finally, buffing to my right. "I came for Hamlet, actually. I wondered if you could help me with it, but it seems your intellect is not enough to understand these types of literature."

"Oh yes, it is tremendously difficult to understand stupid British lines printed into a diary also denominated book."

"Shakespare was English, for your vicious information."

"Like if I actually care for the difference."

He crafts a half smirk, blinks a few times and faces right in signs of satisfaction. I think the thing that bothered me the most was the big moron smile he had naturally set up, trying to hold laughter inside him and swallow it as fast as possible, perhaps caused by the irritation vibes he was sending me, working efficiently. I actually wanted to snap him back into his own; you know, pain is the best way of learning. But that was not the image of someone from Philly. I had to remain on my own as much as I could before I ran wild and probably went towards the driver’s seat to ask him kindly to boot the boy out of the tramway.

He half closed his eyes for a minute and leaned closer, afterwards blinking a few times consecutively. He indeed, m ay have noticed I was completely out of answers. Instantly, there was a mockingly awkward smile drawn on his face I felt guilty for helping to create, but I wasn't going to let myself seem lowered down into his tactic . "Why must you be that rude? Give me a break, you stupid pubescent. I'm just trying to be kind." I complain, picking my books back up with intentions of heading back to my chair. I felt kind of surprised when the word 'Stupid' was mentioned in my lines. I'm supposed to be one of those kids that are taught to grow speaking the same lexicon as the Queen; It was the first time I actually aggrieved someone and meant it literally.

"Anything else I may help you with?" He jibes, sarcastically.

"Nothing really. Besides you haven't helped me in literally nothing."

"That was the idea since the beginning. Brilliant, isn't it? Just... waving you off. “He confirmed, standing up and picking his backpack from the floor "But it seems I also achieved your hate, which is a tremendous prize to consider." It took me a second to figure out the tramway had stopped as well, standing into the parade the cunt had to get off at. I took hurried but controlled steps to the front to reach my original seat back again, so when he went through besides me it was less awkward than if I had decided to stay near to his seat.

After he was gone, the tramway set itself on going, back into the predicted route. I took a seat back again and followed him with my gaze, as he walked back into an open residential zone.

"Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out, douche." I mumbled for myself.

●●

I pushed the doors of Anteiku hardly with my backpack hanging from my shoulder. The waiter uniform was almost escaping through the half-opened zip of it, so I forced my way inside, boosting height as I leant over it, almost tripping down when it successfully opened. In a quick movement, my hand was creasing the uniform back inside the deep blue safari bag.

Anteiku wasn't exactly empty, but more peacefully quiet than desolated. It's beige-brown walls were in perfect condition, the TV was on in the national news, the tables were shinny and translucent thanks to Nishio's wonderful job with the cleaning.

Yoshimura swept back his hair, fixing the cut a bit, as he welcomed me from the barstool while cleaning a pure white cup of tea, having that tranquilizing composure and discrete nature he had always had. Loser was peeking behind his neck from shoulder to shoulder in sign of annoyance, probably demonstrating how hungry he was, yet Yoshimura seemed particularly calm upon the bird. Rather than bored of it, it seemed like if the annoying noise the bird was creating was just a melody to his old and crumpled ears.

"Was the ride difficult,Kaneki?"the elder questioned, leaving his moist towel aside and heading for me and my safari bag.

"Not at all. Was I late?" I dropped my safari aside and kneeled down to it, beginning to scrabble around its interiors looking for the uniform. "My most sincere apologies for the delay if so."

I could feel Yoshimura crafting a little, fancy and kind grin from his position. " Your presence is always on time, you must not worry." He ensured softly. Returning to the barstool

I hung the safari bag on the hat rack at the right and headed with my uniform to the door which mentioned "staff only" on a sign stuck to it. Yoshimura wasn't going to accompany me. I guess he was beyond of worried about customers coming to the establishment and finding it empty with no workers at the job.

I pushed the door and climbed up the stairs to the third floor (Anteiku was located on the second level of the building). Making my way through the hallway, the second door to the right half way oppened caught my attention. I approached to it, wondering of someone was inside, and caught glance of Nishio and Touka sharing the couch and talking, almost to the point of mumbling. -...near me, It means no good.- I could hear through. -send him back...understandable-.  
Nishio seemed calmed, he kept fixing his orange sweater as he established the conversation with Touka. She, instead, kept her head down, her legs opened a bit, her arm relying on them like if he had just failed to surpass the last level on a videogame and had to start it all over again.

She seemed really disturbed. My senses weren't near of an explanation of why.

I knocked the door three times and asked, without words, just with my sight, permission to enter the room. Nishio turned to me and invited me to enter. Touka kept stabbing her eyes to the floor, not minding about my presence at all.

Touka Kirishima had been working on Anteiku even before my arrival for the job request. She is short, blue haired, and sort of attractive, besides strong and healthy. She hadn't attended to work at Anteiku; she had decided to spend almost the entire day filling books with her handwriting and studying. I knew she had some problems at school, because she was aiming for a very high-ranked university at Tokyo - one Nishio had already been to, which can explain why was he on the same room as her- but somehow, I felt that the air surrounding her wasn't because of the anxiety of the academy requests or homework. Touka was quite strong for girls her age, so it was kind of weird to see her

"Is everything ok?" I wandered around, taking a seat on the red couch as well.

Nishio laid his back against the couch. "We're just talking about stuff, nothing of your business."

I threw a threatening glance at him, returning immediately my eyes to Touka. He released a loud buff, Nishio's shit was nothing of my business at the time.

"It's nothing really," Touka delivered back. Her head arose and her eyes met with mine, looking for an entrance to comprehension, her eyebrows were down, like if she was making the biggest of efforts to keep them from falling of her forehead. "Just...well. Something."

"There must be a way in which I can help." I ensured, almost immediately. I tried to keep her wyes up with mine as much as possible, but it was unuseful. After seconds of eye contact, her sight returned down. “What’s the matter?"

Nishio cut through her words before she could even answer, like if he knew every of Touka's problems before she did. Anyway it seemed like if Touka wasn't on plans of reasoning and giving me an answer either. "Brother. Back in town."

It seemed to me that the word Brother, from the whole dictionary, had the worst negative effect on Touka. Her eyes widened like if she had seen a spectrum, her hands held tight of each other, her legs shook coldly, like a woman who had just failed her pregnancy test. Blinking a couple of times did not help, she was perhaps fat from convincing herself of what was happening wasn't actually real. But what was the big deal with her brother? I mean, he's family. I would have loved a brother, but that was just another weight on my mother's weak and fragile shoulders.

"Is there something wrong with your brother?" I inquired, to keep her away from, perhaps, horrible memories. Nishio glanced at me, like if my kind words of support weren't helping actually in anything.

Touka relaxed a bit. "He's not... a good brother actually. He's... quite intimidating, and it's not of much comfort to have him in Philly, specially around Anteiku.."

Okey, intimidating.

I perambulate my eyes around the room for a second. "If it doesn't bother you or anything," I ask hesitantly, wondering if it was really fine to spit out my words at the time "may I ask what his name is?"

Touka faced me, with one of those usual glances she gives me when she knows for sure that I don't know what the heck I'm talking about. Yet despite the fact that she told me with her eyes I was making stupid questions, I actually didn't think Touka had a brother in the first instance, and I didn't know what subject she was dealing with.

"You must've already met him."

"How come?" I wonder "In the first place, the mere fact of you having a brother is fresh incoming for me."

Touka glanced back to the floor, probably thinking of some aspects that lead me to know who were we talking about, and somehow, trying to help me recognize him. But the first physical characteristics she gave me left me intrigued and highly disturbed. I wondered for some seconds if it was just a coincidence. But apparently coincidences did not exist in the context we were focusing on.

"Y'know. Dark blue hair, blue eyes...dresses as a punk... I've seen your tramway pass in front of our house actually. And considering the new station was placed just in front of our residential area, I guess he must have started taking the ride with you to Allen's. He enrolled in it as well, partially to improve his photography skills."

Nishio buffed, focusing on expanding my information about the case "It's been a long time since Ayato was in Philly for the last time. Touka moved here basically to keep as much distance from him as possible, but apparently the effect vanished."

"Where does he come from, then?"

"New York."

New York, I see. His behavior is no bad made miracle after all, everything has an explanation.

"Why would he return? Is there any specific reason related to studies or something?"

"He... I don't know. Maybe dad." Touka's chances to craft a smile were being swallowed by the void. "Maybe something went wrong with Dad, otherwise Ayato wouldn't have dared himself to leave him alone, considering his condition."

What a curious name. Ayato. First name on my 'Do not approach' list.

Touching the thematic of Touka's dad was much easier. One of the reasons why she had preferred to work on a full turn was because her dad had incurred some serious lung cancer after his wife died. Around three packs of cigarettes began showing up in the trashcans of the Kirishima's house daily, the house began smelling terribly disgusting to smoke. He finally decided to stop when he was diagnosed with the illness, but stayed at home every single minute of the day, according to Touka.

"....Ayato..?"

"Kirishima.

"Right, sorry."

Everything went silent.

"It's not like I worry about the mutt or anything, but I've got no news of Dad, or how is his illness going." She said at last "And if Ayato ever decided to abandoned pops because he wanted to, leaving him all by himself, I'll kick him back to the Smokey and polluted streets of New York in the next train ride there, I don't mind if his studentship goes to hell as well."

"Then why didn't you simply stay with your dad inseam of leaving him on your brother's hands?"

"Because Ayato's kind of those people who don't do anything of fucking anything to get the family's economy balanced. He never intended to work, not even at home, or at least join some sort of system in which he could raise or gain money for Dad's medical equipment or medicine. Not leaving the family's power balance on him is something I don't actually regret. Basically, the Kirishimas are relying on me; dad and Ayato depend completely on this job I have now, even though I don't have to pay Ayato's enrollment in Allen's for the following three years because of his scholarship."

"And what's the point? Can I help?" I inquire kindly.

Taking the ideal to go back to work, both of them, Nishio and Touka, raised themselves from their seats.

"If you don’t want to get in serious problems with him, don't even breathe his same air."

**Author's Note:**

> ▓ A/N ▓  
> I don't even know how this actually interested me. At first, it was a quick sketch about an Alucard x Integra fanfiction but I never knew it would eventually go to what it is now.  
> I'm deeply sorry for the fact that I'll love to torture Kaneki more than what he has suffered until now, with nightmares and visions and attempt to make his life a shit. But it'll be fun, I swear. I'm good.  
> The thing is, that I have almost everything planned and I just hope this goes out pretty well *crosses fingers*. I have never ever finished a fanfiction because I'm a lazy sloth.  
> Anyway.  
> This fanfiction is my first one here, and I just hope it goes out well. You can read it on Wattpad as well; I think I'll be publishing the chapters over there before than here.  
> Thanks for reading and keep into my next updates :)  
> -Batman.


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